Lancashire artist creates 3D cosmic look in Travelodge hotel rooms

AN artist who had a “star-studded” idea has seen it “twinkle” into life after a hotel chain hired him to transform bedroom ceilings into cosmic panoramas.

Travelodge has launched a hotel room which will allow customers to sleep under the stars in the comfort of their bed. The secret technique has been developed by 45-year-old Chorley artist Carl Marshall.

He has now created ‘Night Skies’ at a dozen hotels across the country. Carl transforms a standard white ceiling by hand-painting individual shooting stars, milky ways, and constellations of twinkling stars. On average, it took three hours to complete one ceiling.

During the day, the ceilings look plain white, but in darkness the stars appear to twinkle, and the dust clouds seem to move mysteriously. He created the ceilings by working in the dark, wearing a UV headlight.

He covered the ceiling with a base layer of special light-activated paint, then used glow-in-the-dark paint that glows blue, green and aqua to add dust clouds, stars and their tails.

The paintwork soaks up light during daylight hours, and glows in darkness.

He said: “The exact technique I use is a closely-guarded trade secret. It’s a painstaking process as you have to position the colours perfectly to achieve a three-dimensional effect, but the results are worth it.”

Travelodge created the UK’s first night sky panorama hotel rooms in response to findings from its latest sleep study. The study revealed the most desired kipping location for Britons is under a blanket of twinkling stars.